A Feast of Astronomical Observing

And now I’ve forgotten to post through March… which is a shame because it was a huge improvement over February. Not only a big uptick in the quantity of observing opportunities, but lots of variety in my observing diet too.

Both this month and the last have started with some Lunar observing. I’m starting to take this increasingly seriously just as the Moon is due to sink lower in my sky until it disappears behind the house until Autumn… still you have to start sometime, and I’ve decided now with the Charles Wood’s Lunar 100.

Which is why I’m very happy to welcome the return of solar observing. As the Moon sinks, the Sun is getting higher in our northern hemisphere skies, so it’s around now that I start to swap lunar for solar observing. Despite being around solar minimum, with relatively few sunspots to be seen, I’ve been rewarded with some Hα fireworks and spectacular white light sunspots in the last few weeks. Few in number perhaps, but the quality was undiminished.

Planetary observing wasn’t left out as I followed the sliver of Venus up to the last possible moment. For me that was the point it fell behind the houses and trees to the west at sunset on 15 March 2017, but it was a very thin crescent by then: I estimated 5% and Stellarium claims 4.4% illumination. I’ve caught a glimpse of Mercury at sunset too.

There were several Jovian sessions, even though it’s a bit too low to see well from my back garden. I can observe Jupiter low to the SE over the top of my garage for about 30 minutes before it goes behind the house. No moon transits yet, but a look at a slightly washed out Great Red Spot (GRS) was possible in my 60mm refractor. Why the small scope? To have any view I have to pick my position carefully, and you try manhandling a large telescope into the garden undergrowth.

I’ve tried to spot the comets 45P/Honda and C/2015 V2 (Johnson) with my binoculars, but with no success. At first they were too faint or low, then the Moon arrived and I haven’t bothered again. Once the Moon disappears I’ll certainly try again for the latter of the two at least.

March witnessed the arrival of British Summer Time (BST) which heralds the rapid shortening of night in these parts. Naturally in astronomical circles this is never well received, and Deep-Sky observing isn’t going to be easy! By the end of May there’s no astronomical darkness for a couple of months, but in the meantime there can be some lovely transparent skies for the patient.

After a rather wet period in the middle of March, during which the Moon got out of the way, clear skies returned just before BST inflicted itself upon us. I’ve started working on the Herschel 400 list again. This spread of several nights gave me the chance to start on the faint and fuzzy galaxies of Spring, as well as polishing off some surprisingly faint open clusters from late Winter.

Finally, I’ve collected a few more variable star observations thus clearing the backlog a bit and responding to an AAVSO alert on AG Dra (one I regularly follow). The conditions haven’t been great for it: patchy cloud doesn’t kill a lunar session, but it makes reliable binocular variable estimates pretty tricky. Still it’s nice to be logging some data again.

So a March was a much better month and April has started in stunning style with observing sessions on each of the first seven days!